


Different

by TheSoupDragon



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (Like - an actual happy ending....), :), A little bit of a case fic gem in this one :), And so Mary is not a wholly good person in it, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bit angsty but with a happy ending, Happy Ending, I cannot believe I nearly forgot to tag it Johnlock!!!!, I was not a Mary fan when I wrote this story..., John's POV, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock after The Reichenbach Fall, M/M, Mention of canon events surrounding Sherlock's fall, Revisiting canon events of The Reichenbach Fall, Sherlock's POV, Sorry to all Mary fans, Unrequited love which is eventually requited
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28809747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoupDragon/pseuds/TheSoupDragon
Summary: Sherlock thinks about things all the time.This time he can't think clearly.Why not?What exactly is the problem, anyway? And why is the answer to it evading him?
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 12





	1. The Problem

**Author's Note:**

> I even gave myself a deadline for this, can you believe? I started writing it in April 2014, after Series Three had ended, and it started with a short section of dialogue which simply came to me from nowhere, as they sometimes do, and then it just sort of _grew._ I had loads of ideas for it. This was the first time I’d tried writing from mainly Sherlock’s point of view and I also realised that I would have to write about Mary for the first time...so I was getting really excited about writing this story and it was getting longer and longer…and _THEN_ Series Four happened…and I really couldn’t continue with it for quite a while. 
> 
> So basically, I’m saying (long-windedly and indulgently), this story was almost finished but not quite when I watched Series Four, and so then I had to wait until (the horror of) Series Four, Episode 3 had faded away from my memory a bit, and my mind had cleared (from the black clouds and heavy rain) and only then I could go back to it and finish it. 
> 
> So, please, I’d like to ask you to take your mind back to somewhere around the end of Series Three and where we were there then, and read this story with that time in your mind; because that was where I was when I wrote this, and you can pretend along with me that Series Four never actually happened. :P
> 
> Thanks as always are due to StarsAndStitches, for the brilliant beta-reading, squealing and cheer-leading, and to Jae_Blaze for being the most enthusiastic live-reading commenter a dragon could ever wish for! ❤️❤️❤️

_**Sherlock**_

Sherlock was thinking. He was sitting in his armchair, pretending to read the Sunday Times, but what he was actually doing was letting his eyes glaze over at the newsprint and he was thinking. He had walked into the room needing to think about what had been on his mind this morning when he woke up, and been about to lie down on the sofa and think properly, but then he realised as he stepped towards it, that if he did that, John might ask what he was thinking about and he didn't want to tell John that he was thinking about him. As John himself would have put it, for this he really needed to "act normal." So, mid step, he had changed direction abruptly from towards the sofa to towards his armchair and had picked up the paper that John had laid on its arm for him, already opened to the obituary pages, and had sat down. John was in his own armchair, sipping his coffee and reading The Lancet, and he was being quiet. Dust motes were gently dancing their usual slow waltz in the sunbeams slanting in through the windows, and these were, in their turn, creating two rectangular pools of slightly dusty warmth on the worn carpet. There was no case on. It was peace personified.

So it was boring, but it was also a perfect setting for thinking.

Sherlock had sat down, opened the paper and lifted it up - but only as thinking cover - and decided to start at the beginning. What he needed to think about was _John_ , but as this problem primarily involved himself first, he would need to go backwards and start from there.

He began by thinking, slightly abstractly, that he had thought, at least, that he knew _himself._ He had thought he knew precisely how he would react to, in, and from certain situations, and he knew how he ticked. But recent events had proved this not quite to be the case, and now he needed to think about why. 

He knew that sometimes when he was making deductions on a difficult case, and there were splintered facts and evidence spread everywhere, like a wine glass dropped on a stone floor; after it all came together - like time reversing of the dropping of the glass, like a white implosion coming together backwards in his mind - suddenly he just _knew_. It was not as if he'd just _'worked it out'_ or _'put it all together’,_ like some people had said about him. It was not that mundane or clumsy - it was so often much more explosive than that. As if he'd almost seen it all along, but had just been looking at it from slightly the wrong angle, or it had been there but been blurred, and then suddenly something changed in a burst of high frequency energy and he had just _seen_ everything clearly, as clear as day. No one recognised his ability for what it was. People thought it was weird. _He_ was weird. Or didn't believe it. Or didn’t believe him. Lestrade _did_ believe it, _did_ believe him, and he occasionally even said _’thank you’_ or _’well done’,_ but Sherlock knew that on the whole he was regarded by the rest of the cretins at Scotland Yard as being just as strange and unpredictable as some of their suspects. 

That was how it was. Always. Simple. But it was what he knew. Along with the drugs, of course. He knew those. He knew those _very_ well. 

And then John had come along. And when John had come along, at first he had just been someone new to show this ability off to, but quite quickly Sherlock saw how very different John was. And how John saw _him_ differently to how everyone else saw him, and then, Sherlock began to see _John_ differently. And to think about him differently. And everything _changed._ He began to want to show off to John and to impress John and he had realised he wanted...he actually wanted John to _like_ him. Why was that? He never cared whether people _liked_ him or not. Why would he care? But John was… _different_ , so different to other people. 

He said Sherlock was ‘amazing' and 'extraordinary' and 'brilliant' and Sherlock basked in his praise like a cat in the sun after a long winter. And Sherlock felt… _differently_ about John. The feeling of _”different”_ had gradually become italicised in his mind, like the feeling of _like._

So - very well, he felt _differently_ about John. John made him _feel_ different. And all this _feeling,_ it was not like him at all. 

...But there was more. When exactly had the different become _quite_ different?

Sherlock was struggling with this, but he had realised recently that not only did he need John's praise like other people needed food and water, something had woken up in him - something that had been long dormant. Something had been switched on, been ignited with a slow burn. And now he couldn't switch it off or snuff it out. 

He had also found that nor did he much want to do either of those things. He didn't know why. Which was also disturbing him. 

But what he did know was that he didn't need the drugs anymore. 

And now he kept _thinking_ about John. _JohnJohnJohn._ The way John drove him mad with his not-thinking, with his inane questions, with his tidy tidiness when all Sherlock wanted was some chaos around him to be able to think clearly... But then, sometimes John being around was like Sherlock having his own lightning conductor. John sometimes had the ability to ask exactly the right question that would focus Sherlock's raging electrical storm of nearly-but-not-quite-knowing into a single point of light, a beam of energy that shot down and hit the ground and engulfed him and became him suddenly _seeing_ everything...

And then, at other times, John's steadying presence was like the weight of a great cast-iron anchor, gently holding Sherlock down and keeping him right, holding his mind fast when it was beginning to flail off onto one of his whirlwind black journeys, spiralling out lost into the dark stratosphere.

And then, sometimes, John just sat there - like today - calm and quiet and thoughtful, with his calm, quiet thoughtfulness spreading secretly throughout the flat, permeating every nook and cranny, until it made Sherlock feel calm and quiet and thoughtful by virtue of its soft persistence. 

And _then,_ of course, there was the fact that John had also shot a serial killer to save Sherlock. Well, he thought that was what he had done - obviously Sherlock knew he had chosen the right pill, so he wouldn't actually have been poisoned and died, but still - John had thought he was shooting a serial murderer to stop Sherlock from becoming his next victim - so, more precisely then, he’d done it specifically to save Sherlock's life, and who else would have done that? 

No-one else would have done that.  
But John had. 

So John would do what it took to protect Sherlock. And Sherlock knew he would do so again, if necessary. And that was important. 

Sometimes Sherlock looked at John secretly, when he was busy not noticing Sherlock, and Sherlock would see the folds and creases and lines on John's face deepen as he frowned at something he was doing, or thinking about, and Sherlock found he wanted to soften them by making John look up at him and smile. Or even laugh. And John's laugh was a thing of beauty indeed. John's laugh was precious and so deeply infectious. Hearing it often made Sherlock laugh. And that was a pretty rare occurrence. To put it in perspective, before John had come along, he had very seldom laughed at all. Before John had come along, there had been very little laughter in Sherlock's life. There had mainly just been getting high. Scoring the drugs and getting high and then the slippery roller-coaster of descent down into the big black hole of oblivion…only to have to crawl back up again eventually. The cocaine brought with it the gift of frantically excessive creativity and an insanely increased speed of thought, but as its thrill deserted him, the speed and depth of the drop was a terribly high price to pay.

“Like Alice down the rabbit hole,” Mycroft had observed, “but you still need to come back up and face yourself, Sherlock.” But - curiouser and curiouser, Sherlock thought - since John had been living at 221b, Sherlock had thought about what relief the drugs gave him much less often…and besides, he had sort of _promised_ Mycroft. He did still want them, sometimes, only far less frequently - and now he found he didn't _need_ them anymore with that desperate clawing need. And there was a vast difference between the want and the need.

'That's precisely what I mean,' thought Sherlock crossly in irritation at his own thought processes, 'now I'm quoting children's literature! I can't even think like a mathematician or a scientist anymore - I'm beginning to think like a _writer_ or a… _poet!’_ The words were like insults. ‘And it's all John's fault.’

And lately sometimes, he thought of other things...things that he really hadn't thought about for a very long time. Things that had certainly been dormant since his very late boyhood and had re-surfaced briefly again in his university years when life had been so, _so_ difficult. If only he'd had John then. 

He surreptitiously lowered the Sunday Times and looked over the top at John. To check things were still… _the same._ Hmmm. They were. He still felt... something _different_ about John. It was hard to quantify but it was vast and nebulous. 

He needed to think about what he had actually said yesterday, about what had been almost the first thought in his mind this morning when he woke up. 

So he closed his eyes and went back there in his mind.


	2. The Realisation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No angst in this one. :)

Earlier in the week, Sherlock had been bored and at John's suggestion, he had gone in desperation to Lestrade, to ask for some cold cases to occupy him. Sherlock had been going up in the lift on the way to Lestrade’s office, and the lift doors had opened and in had got Anderson. Sherlock had looked him up and down and noticed things but said nothing. Anderson glared back at him, red-faced, bristling and waiting for Sherlock to speak, but Sherlock didn't bite. In the end he raised his eyebrow and said coldly, "Something wrong, Anderson?"  
"Nothing at all," Anderson snapped. And he got out at the next floor. Sherlock got out of the lift himself after him, and turned to go the other way, and then bumped, literally, into Donovan coming round the corner from the staircase at some speed.  
Although it was actually she who had bumped into Sherlock, she jerked away, barked, "Why don't you watch where you're going, freak?" and swept on down the corridor past him.  
He looked at her retreating back. He thought about John saying to him, "Why do you let her speak to you like that? Like you're nothing?" At the time, Sherlock had shrugged, uncaring, but this time John's words resounded in his head. 

Sherlock really didn't like to be coarse, but Donovan was pond life after all.

"Why don't _you_ pop back into the evidence room with Anderson?" he shot loudly after her. She turned back and in four quick strides, rounded on him like a rising cobra. “You filthy pervert!” she spat, pointing viciously at him, but she kept her voice low so as not to be overheard. "You were just spying on us, weren't you?"  
Sherlock grimaced. "Oh, wouldn't dream of it, Donovan, really," he said smoothly but with evident distaste. "It was just that the chalk dust smeared on the back of your skirt matches the chalk dust smeared on the front of Anderson’s jacket...You must have...bumped up against each other, somehow...and it would appear that you both got rather…warm and… _creased._ Maybe you forgot what you went in there for. That's all."  
Her viciously pointing finger lost all its power and she drew back, her righteous anger fading but her face contorting with speechless indignant venom.  
"Well. Things to do!” Sherlock declared in mock gaiety, and took this moment to whisk away off down the corridor in the opposite direction, leaving her standing there in his wake, discreetly brushing down her skirt.

When he had got home, John had asked, "Anything happening at the station?" And Sherlock had thought of the exchanges with Donovan and Anderson, and knew John would appreciate what he had said to shut her up and so he had told John the story. 

And John had barked out a shout of laughter, scandalised, and exclaimed, "No _way!_ You really said that? That’s—that’s _shocking!_ ” and then he shook his head, laughing and still grinning, had added, "Sometimes you do really shock me, Sherlock!" but Sherlock saw that he was shocked and amused and not shocked and angry. 

So Sherlock had smiled, enjoying John's scandalised face, his amusement and his obvious admiration, and had said on impulse, “Well, you know I do love shocking you, John.”  
And John had thrown him a look and smirked at him in a warm, familiar way, and Sherlock's heart had emitted a single, sudden, hard beat. And that had been strange. 

But then, over the next few days, he had found the conversation playing over and over in his head and re-seeing John's warm, knowing smirk and re-feeling his heart make that odd, sudden, hard thump and he didn't quite know what was going on. Why had he even said that to John? He never said he _"loved”_ things, or used that word to describe his measure of enjoyment. He appreciated good tailoring, and the feel of silk against his skin in the form of a shirt or underwear, he relished the joy of getting a difficult sonata exactly right. He rather enjoyed a good storm. But _‘love?’_ That was most odd of him to say that word in that context, and he had said it without really thinking. It was the sort of comment John made; that he said he "loved" something to mean he really enjoyed it, or liked it immensely, or relished it. Maybe it was simply too much time spent with John and he was picking up on these slang 'John-isms'. 

Then he had had to pause his contemplation about it, what with Lestrade phoning up just then about the nearly naked body of a young man with hardly a mark on it just being found up an oak tree in one of the smaller London parks that bounded a very residential area, and them having to go over there to look at it, and listen to that imbecile Anderson braying to all those present that he _“fully believed it to be a ritual murder”,_ because there was no obvious sign of trauma on the unmarked body. _“Clearly poisoned”,_ he'd bugled further; _“definitely ritualistic”,_ he proclaimed with certainty, because it was Midsummer's day, and then he spouted some rot about _’druids’_ and _’pagans’_ and _’oak trees’_ and Sherlock had despaired, and had to talk to Lestrade and be clever in front of John and explain that obviously it was death caused by lightning, specifically a cardiac arrest caused by splash lightning to the victim as the lightning strike had hit the tree while the victim was up it. Sherlock predicted (correctly) that the victim would display the characteristic Lichtenberg figures ("commonly known as 'lightning flowers’”) on the chest and neck where skin capillaries ruptured due to the electrical discharge, and he then indicated the places where the bark had been blown off the trunk of the tree, where the sap vaporised as the current found its way to the ground. Then he had started asking the many dog walkers and runners who were conveniently milling about nearby, and all pretending not to notice the crime scene tape, if they had seen anything, and one who was walking past said helpfully that she thought she had seen a lightning strike hit somewhere in the park from her bedroom window, very early that morning, during the storm, _"why, yes, a couple of hours ago,"_ and, Oh! What a surprise! The approximate time of death coincided with the time of the thunderstorm!…and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera; _annnnd_ the dead man's cat _must_ have just got down by itself when the storm really got going anyway, as anyone could see where the cat's claws had left numerous fresh scratch marks going down the trunk directly above where the body had been found anyway, and then it transpired via a phone call to the officers searching the deceased man's home that; yes, there was a cat, and yes, it was at home, safe and sound, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. 

_So._

_Boring._

Easy and tiresome, not exciting at all _or_ murderous, but it made the day pass faster, annoyed Anderson, and gave them all some fresh air. 

Anyway, what with all that, he had forgotten about the _’Well, you know I do love shocking you, John,’_ but then, he had woken up this morning feeling odd. Feeling a sense of achievement, like he did when he'd just worked something out that had been on his mind for a while and he was puzzled as to what it was, but then as he laid in bed, he smelt the coffee which had woken him up, and so he reached for his phone on the bedside table and texted John, _’WHERE’S MY COFFEE, JOHN?’_ And as he wrote John's name, the thought, _’Well, you know I do love shocking you, John,’_ with the words said in his own voice came back into his head and it revolved around a bit. And it kept revolving. Oh, it was so _irritating!_ What did it _want?_ Why wouldn't that thought go away? John had brought him in some coffee, talked about some inanities and then gone out. Sherlock had drunk his coffee, trying to think, and then realised he needed to change his scenery and to get up, have a wash, put some clothes on and go and lie down on the sofa in the sitting room - which was his best thinking place - and think. 

And so here he was. Thinking. Not lying down on the sofa where he would prefer to be, but still thinking nonetheless. He couldn't steeple his fingers either because to John that would also be a clear sign that he was thinking and John might ask what about. He flicked the newspaper in irritation at his lack of progress. 

If he closed his eyes, he could see the nine words he had spoken in bright white Times New Roman font circling around and around. As if he had just seen them as a headline in the newspaper he was holding. He mentally waved them away, he couldn't think with that… _fluff_ …clouding his thought processes; auditory was bad enough, but now visual… and it wouldn't go away. Every time he waved it away, it kept coming back. 

_Why?_

_Oh._

Oh. Of course. 

Of course it wouldn't go away, because his helpful subconscious was trying to tell him something. 

He raised the newspaper again to hide his face from John and get some privacy so he could think about this. He had to examine it. 

To deduce it properly. 

Ok, then. Q & A. 

Question: What did it mean when what seemed like a random thought or irrelevant collection of words someone had spoken wouldn't go away?  
Answer: _Because it's actually not random, or irrelevant, it’s important._

…Because…? 

_Because it means something…_

…So it’s important because there's something about it I need to know… 

_Well. Obviously…_

He was floundering. 

He tried again. 

...Because it’s important and there's something about it I need to know and thus far...I am missing it. 

This was ridiculous. He was getting nowhere. 

He turned it around another way; start again: him saying those nine words, “Well, you know I do love shocking you, John,” and he wanted to look directly at the words themselves to see why they wouldn't leave him alone. The words had faded away while he concentrated, but now they re-appeared again, helpfully clear, in their bright white, Times New Roman font and said, “Well, you, know, I, do, love, shocking, you, John.” And then in his head, “Well” just burst into a tiny puff of smoke and was gone, "you" and "know" joined together and fell off the front of that sentence, then the single word "do" fizzled away somehow and then "shocking" faded to a blur and then just quietly dropped away, and he was left with 

" I love you, John," 

and the words moved closer together and turned gold as he thought about them. 

He frowned. 

This was new. 

_What did this mean?_

Did this mean…? 

The paper began to lower to his lap, as his hands that were holding it began to lower themselves to his lap, and he saw John come into his line of sight over the top of his newspaper. John was looking at him oddly. Sherlock realised he must have had a very strange look on his face because the look John was currently giving him back was slightly concerned. "What's up?" asked John, innocently. 

Sherlock didn't reply. He knew his face would be telling John that he had just worked something out. John always knew by his face. Had to say something. And Sherlock couldn't lie about this. 

Perfectly on cue, John scratched his nose and then said, "What've you just worked out then?” Like it might be something interesting, but not momentous, not earth-shattering. 

Sherlock opened his mouth and after a moment, some words came out of it. "I...I've just worked something out. Something that's...been on my mind for...for some time...I've just realised what it is."  
John sat back in his chair and gave Sherlock his full attention.  
"Oh, right? What?" he said easily, all interested. 

Sherlock couldn't even begin to try to say to John what he had just worked out. "Nothing. Nothing, it doesn't matter."  
John did that thing with his face, a kind of frowning and then a pursing of his lips and raising of his eyebrows which meant; _Well, you could have fooled me,_ but he didn't press for anything more.  
Sherlock made his own face blank and stared back at him and then John tipped his head sideways, rolled his eyes and blew a bit of air out through his mouth, as if to say, _Ok, then, if you say so,_ and went back to The Lancet. 

And nothing more was said about it. 

Sherlock brought the paper up again and turned his mind outward for further proof. He thought about how so often people looked at Sherlock and John, saw their close proximity, saw their body language, saw the way they looked at each other and then assumed that they were a couple. Assumed they were _together;_ more than friends or colleagues. Sometimes they didn't say anything about that assumption, sometimes they did. Whether they did or whether they didn't, Sherlock never corrected them.  
_'And why don't you ever correct them when they assume you and John are a couple?'_ asked Sherlock's subconscious suddenly. It often asked questions, sometimes it posed as someone else, sometimes it was just a voiceless voice in his head. Sometimes these questions helped him solve a case, and so were useful and helpful, but sometimes his subconscious was annoying and asked questions he didn't want to answer. Like this one, which he ignored.  
_'Why_ don't _you correct them?'_ it persisted.  
'Not interested in what they think in their tiny little minds,' replied Sherlock. 'Don't care.'  
_'Oh, but you_ do _care when they make a mistake with the facts about a case though, don't you?'_ sneered his subconscious. _'You care enough then to meticulously correct every single erroneous detail, don't you? But you don't care enough to correct that massive,_ whopping _great error, you just let that pass…’_ Then the voice of his subconscious softened, because it knew it had to tread carefully; it knew by now what it was treading on. _’So why don't you ever correct them when they make that mistake about you and John?’_ it whispered conspiratorially.  
Instead of answering, Sherlock turned his head a fraction and shot a glance up from under his eyebrows to look at John, who was still reading, oblivious to the heated discussion going on in Sherlock's head. John's face had a mind of its own as he sat reading, and as he watched John, Sherlock's heart did that odd, single, strong, hard beat again. And then he was more honest with himself than he had ever been in his whole life, and he answered. ’I don't correct them about John and I because I wish it were true,’ he thought. And _that_ was the truth. 

So; Sherlock realised. And he kept his new knowledge hidden. Even his subconscious shut up about it after that, because it had got what it wanted; he had _seen,_ he had consciously admitted the truth to himself, and so now it really couldn't harp on about it subconsciously anymore. He had solved the problem of why he felt differently about John, and now that knowledge existed secretly in his mind.  
Where it would stay.  
It was like the heart of embers when the fire had burnt down low; the black shells of coal and the dark grey ash hiding the vibrant coral glow that was buried in the centre like a warm secret. 

Of course Mycroft had noticed something and even felt the need to pass comment. Naturally, he had put it in a way that was so typically Mycroft. "Your choice of companion seems to be doing you good, brother, dear," he had purred knowingly. Sherlock had told him to shut up. 

Mrs Hudson had also noticed the change in him and she had put it not so subtly. "Oh, he's good for you, Sherlock, dear," she had said, warmly, rubbing his arm fondly as she spoke, and Sherlock had just looked her in the eye and sort of smiled. He wasn't angry about Mrs. Hudson knowing. And she knew, even if she didn't say it out loud. 

And so things went on, unchanged.  
But all things have to change eventually. 


	3. The Fall...and the Fall-Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, my sweets, just to pre-warn you - this chapter starts with some of the graphic canon events of The Reichenbach Fall, and what happened in canon immediately afterwards, so be prepared. 
> 
> Later on it veers away from canon…but before (and while) it does, it gets very angsty. It will all end well though, however, I totally promise you that!! ❤️

Years later, several years later, when Sherlock was standing on the roof at St. Barts, the terrible knowledge like a shard of flint in his heart - knowing he had to do this to John, _for_ John, to keep John safe, to keep them all safe - and that being the only reason he had been able to contemplate doing it. He had thought about John before he made the phone call to him, thought about what he had to say, what he needed to say to make this work, and he thought about what he wanted to say and what he couldn't. And by the time he was speaking to John on the phone, on the roof, there was no acting in his voice; though the words were an act, the emotion behind them was all real. And he had remembered, suddenly, so vividly, that day in the sitting room years before, and what he had realised with the thought of “Well, you know I do love shocking you, John", and he thought, this was _goodbye_ to John, at least for a while, but maybe forever; maybe he would never see John again after this, but still he couldn't say it, he just _couldn’t_ say it. 

But he had to _do_ it. He had to do this one thing for John. For them all. And it had to work. 

So he had said, "Stay exactly where you are, John," and held up his hand, but his hand betrayed his thoughts and he realised as he did it, that his hand was not a flat palm warding John off, commanding him to stay back, to stop; in reality, his hand was reaching out, fingers outstretched, his hand was saying saying, _’Come, I need you. This time I_ really, _really need you.’_

But he had to do it. 

John pleaded, "No. No, Sherlock," and Sherlock realised in the cold wind that his face was wet, and though he had thought for a moment that it was from Moriarty's blood, or rain, he realised then it wasn't; it was from his tears. And this time they were no act. 

And so he said goodbye to John, threw the phone aside, saw and heard John below shouting _‘SHERLOCK!!’_ desperately, in a raw beseeching plea, and he had felt the cold tears, felt the cold air, and embraced them both. He whispered "Goodbye, John," again and he jumped into the abyss.

And, and, and.... 

He could not bring himself to think of John, his friend - suddenly as broken on the pavement beside him as he himself seemed to John. Hearing John saying, “Let me through; he's my friend, he's my friend," his voice cracked and anguished, Sherlock seeing as clear as any solved case the vast extent of John's pain and knowing that some part of John was _right then,_ dying inside. Knowing that it was he, _Sherlock,_ who was the cause of it, and that it was both the best and worst disguise that Sherlock had ever worn, to lie there and be dead in front of John.

Never, never, never again, he thought afterwards. 

Never again. 

As he lay there on the cold pavement - with everyone scurrying frantically around him and John almost deathly still, silently weeping beside him - he thought, if he survived this, if he came back from this, he could never do this to John again. 

Everything changed then, at that moment. And he was different too, after The Fall.

So. Then, there followed nearly two years out in the field, under Mycroft, under other orders - alongside others and on his own - seeking them all out. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, but he never _died._ He was never _dead,_ like John thought he was. The photographs that Mycroft sent through to him - at personal great risk to himself, for were that fact to be discovered, Mycroft's actions would have been answerable to at the very highest levels - those few snatched photographs only served to make Sherlock suffer more. John wasn't getting on with his life, John was irreparably broken, grieving, and was not mending. The pain that Sherlock felt when he saw the photographs was quite surprising at first, and then it became indescribable. He hadn't realised he would feel… _like this._ He hadn't realised John would be... _like that._ So _’not-John'._ When Mycroft came to pull him from the Serbian hell hole, twittering gaily in his ear that he was 'back to Baker Street', the pain of the beating he had just received faded into insignificance. He had smiled. Actually smiled for the first time in what felt like months, despite the pain he was in at the time. Oh, the pain was present, it was still agonisingly real and _there,_ but it was nothing compared to the joy, the blinding joy of _‘back to John.’_

But then, there was a fly in the ointment that of all that was _’back to John’,_ and that fly was a woman. A woman called Mary. 

_Mary!_

Mary, whom Sherlock had not anticipated. And so things had not gone to plan, not at all. Nothing had gone to plan.

And he had had to accept that John _had_ mended, after all, to a degree, but with a repair that had moulded someone else into their lives. It was no longer _John and Sherlock._ It was John and Mary… _and_ Sherlock. And it would be John and Mary, _and_ Sherlock from now on. And oh, how that realisation had hurt. 

'You brought it on yourself,' he thought bitterly.  
_But,_ countered his mind quickly, _you made them all safe. John was safe - you kept John safe._ And that was all that mattered. 

~~~~

He even forgave her for shooting him really, because he could see that actually, that incident had been for Mary just like the fall from the roof had been for him. She shot him to save John, possibly it was also to save Sherlock too, but primarily to save John. She did it so John would be safe. 

It was _all_ about John. Oh, how it was _always_ all about John... 

~~~~

When Mycroft had brought him back in the plane after Moriarty's broadcast, he was, at first, only glad again that he had not said the words that he had so wanted to say on the roof, the words that had been in his head and his heart on the terrace at Appledore, the words that had been in his mouth just moments before, on the runway. Having not said those words meant he was able to come back and carry on. If he had said them, he would not have been able to, he could not have done so. Not with Mary standing there, fecund and glowing and so full of the evidence of John's choice.  
“You chose _her,”_ Sherlock had said, feeling his heart break as he said it, and while he respected John's decision, it didn't mean he had to like it. Mary was surprisingly tolerable, he had developed a grudging respect for her, even, but she stood solid and squarely between him and John. 

But that was what John wanted, that was what John had chosen, so...there we be. 

~~~~

And then, today. _Today._ He was playing one of his most difficult pieces, staring mindlessly at the latest cold case evidence and crime scene photos that he had pinned up on the only blank wall, getting irritated at the jump from _b_ to _d flat_ which evaded him repeatedly, and there had been a knock at the door downstairs, which he ignored because Mrs. Hudson was in. But the knocker kept knocking even when he bellowed, “Mrs. Hud- _son!”_ and when she didn't answer and the knocker still kept knocking, he realised that she was, after all, _out,_ and he would have to answer it. So he put his violin down, not particularly gently, and stamped down the stairs in a foul temper and yanked open the door—to _John._

A John who stood looking so utterly wretched that Sherlock felt his face do something he didn't remember it ever really doing before. "What John, what? Is it Mary? Is it the baby?” he asked desperately.  
Now John’s posture changed like a panther about to strike. His eyes darkened as he stared coldly at Sherlock and the muscles in his jaw tightened as he gritted his teeth. "Can I just come in, please?” he said, abruptly, with some emotion that was suddenly so hard to control that the air around him vibrated with the force of containing it. Sherlock looked at him, properly. His hair and face were wet through with the light drizzling rain that was falling, as was his coat, and his shoes and one trouser hem were smeared with the silty mud from the edge of the pond in Regent's Park. He smelt of the cold air and the rain, and his eyes were bitter and sharp with anger and betrayal.

Sherlock moved out of the way, and held the door open, and John came in like he was Mycroft’s East Wind itself, like a sombre harbinger of doom, and Sherlock shut the door behind him very quietly and carefully. John’s silent fury was palpable, it tainted the air of the hallway. Walking up the stairs behind him, Sherlock read everything in John's slow, hard, deliberate steps, so that by the time they reached Sherlock's flat, Sherlock already knew what John was going to say. 

John walked into the flat that he used to call home, where his chair still lived, where his bedroom lay silent and empty upstairs, and he stopped in the doorway of the sitting room and looked into the room, as if for the first time. Sherlock stood on the landing behind him and watched him, and waited respectfully for John to tell him in his own time.  
He had learnt how to do this.  
John stood and breathed for a while, saying nothing, staring at their two empty chairs, and Sherlock, at his back, saw his anger, his fury, his rage and then finally his heartbreak rolling through him in violent waves as he stood there silently, unmoving. Then John went over to his chair, pulled it back gently, and sat down in it carefully. Like he was fragile, like he might break. 

Sherlock went and sat delicately down on his own chair and didn’t lean forward too much and just waited. He looked at John, who couldn't look at him yet, and Sherlock saw John's face struggle and work.  
Still Sherlock said nothing.  
John was on a knife edge and Sherlock didn't want him to slip and fall, he wanted him to choose and jump. 

Eventually John took a breath that was weak and shaky, looked at Sherlock and he spoke like he was repeating a message he had been told to give. "The baby's not mine," he said quietly, matter of factly. "I'm not the baby's father…Mary’s...she's not…” he looked up at the ceiling. “...Uhnnn….she’s been...with someone else, almost all along.” He looked back at Sherlock, and gripped the arms of his chair. “She was...with someone before…” he paused for a long time and then he started again. “It’s _him._ Her ex. _He’s_ the father. Not me. And…and he’s asked her to leave me and go and be with him again. And so…so… she's left!” He sat up, paused and then swallowed hard. He seemed less matter of fact with each word. More conversational. But suddenly his voice grew thicker again and more emotional. “She’s left me...to go and be...with him! And there's more...there's..." and then he stopped speaking and bent his head, resting his elbow on his knee and pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. He breathed in deeply, shakily, his face contorting.

 _Liar,_ thought Sherlock, remembering like a shock of cold water one of the first real deductions he had made about Mary.

Sherlock had learnt a lot in his long absence from John, but he could not find a single word or gesture that would make any of this alright. So he sat, watching John and waiting to know what to do, when John just covered his eyes and looked down at the floor and took another deep gasping breath in. And when he let it out, it came out as a broken sob. And then another followed, and then another. And then his face crumpled like a child's, and he buried it in his hands and bent his body slowly forwards till both his elbows found the support of his bent knees, and he leant on them and began to weep. 

John's almost silent weeping was like a force of nature, of destruction to Sherlock, and it absolutely destroyed Sherlock to watch it. He slid bonelessly off his chair as if in a dream, and stood up. He crossed the tiny space between them to reach John, and stood in front of him. Helpless, he had gone straight to John. Helpless, he extended a hand down for what seemed like miles to reach John's shaking shoulder, and then he gripped it, as firmly as he dared. John moved, fast as a feral cat, and flung his arms around Sherlock's body and pulled him in, and he buried his face in Sherlock's stomach to hide the pain on it, or so Sherlock thought. He found the hand that he had put on John's shoulder slid round onto his back, and the other moved slowly, drawn down to cup the back of John's neck, and his hands stayed there and could not move. Sherlock hugged John back like this, as best as he was able to in their awkward position. So he found he had known exactly what to do all along. He thought he should hold John like this until John wanted him to let go.  
“Do you know why I’m...why I’m… _like this,_ Sherlock?" John demanded suddenly, the words bursting out through his almost silent sobs, his face still half-buried in Sherlock's stomach. "Do you know why?...I need to tell you…Sherlock, I _need_ to tell you—“ his voice was choked with tears and muffled from speaking the words almost directly into Sherlock's shirt, and he said something else then, something that Sherlock couldn’t quite catch - it had sounded a bit like, “I’m glad,” but it couldn’t have been that.  
_‘Glad?’_ he thought. _’Did you say ‘glad’? Glad about what?’_ It didn’t make any sense. But Sherlock couldn't speak to ask him. He didn't even know what to say. He didn't want to hear John describe the pain of his broken heart and his love for Mary, and he thought his voice would only betray his jealousy. He could only keep his hands and arms across John's shoulders and on the back of his neck, and be there for John, and wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay with me... 😌


End file.
